RIT Sponsored Research garners $52.7 million in funding

General

Portfolio up 12 percent; records for new awards, proposals and number of investigators

Nov. 10, 2014

Ellen Rosen

Rochester Institute of Technology’s sponsored research portfolio grew by 12 percent in fiscal year 2014, reaching $52.7 million in funding.

RIT received a record 410 new awards in the fiscal year 2014 from a variety of state, federal, corporate and foundation sponsors. Half the funding came from federal sources, with the National Science Foundation alone providing $11 million in funding, up from $7.4 million the previous year.

“This is an indicator of how RIT continues to mature as a research university,” said Ryne Raffaelle, RIT vice president of research and associate provost. “I am encouraged by how our research portfolio has evolved in new areas such as health-related technology and computing and information security as we continue to grow some of our traditional areas such as sustainability and imaging science.”

The success comes as RIT is on the verge of moving into the national research category as assigned by the Carnegie Foundation, which U.S. News & World Report uses to classify universities. National research classification is based on the number of Ph.D. degrees awarded. RIT had a record 29 graduates earn their doctorates this past spring. A doctoral program in engineering began this fall, becoming RIT’s seventh Ph.D. program and joining astrophysics, color science, computing and information sciences, microsystems engineering, imaging science and sustainability.